Vivian didn’t have a new spring hat, but she did have a new invisible, self-appointed halo. She left that in place, but hung her beige cotton gabardine coat on its hook, over her pocketbook, then entered the switchboard room and made a declaration to her fellow operators.
“I will no longer be eavesdropping on the telephone conversations.”
She made this declaration in a whisper, out of earshot of their supervisor Leona, because the switchboard operators at Bell were not supposed to listen in on the conversations. It was definitely there, somewhere, in the rule book. And now, suddenly, Vivian agreed with it.
Her announcement had been met with dubious furrowed brows, both black-penciled and brown, and the switchboard operators at Bell decided to give Vivian some space in the minutes, hours, and days following that odd announcement. It was one thing to decide not to eavesdrop herself (Maria Tomasetti had just shaken her head and laughed), and quite another to pass judgment on all the others. But they’d all read the newspapers about Edward’s secret, dangerous, delinquent son attacking poor Charlotte. Vivian deserved some compassion and some space to breathe, and they just ignored her when she judged them; when she pursed her lips and shook her head if she spied Dorothy, Ruth, Pearl, or Laura flip the mute switch and lean in to listen.
The rest of Wooster had been catching their collective breath as well, as the hysteria of late February gradually subsided. The month of March had ushered in at least one significant change. J. Ellis Reed resigned his position as mayor, out of embarrassment over the scandal, and had taken an early retirement in order to spend more time with his wife, who was standing by his side, pale, poised, and wearing a forced smile, in the face of it all.
Harold Richardson, the council president, had to be sworn in as interim mayor, but when the term was up there would be another election. The grapevine was already buzzing that there was a lady—A LADY—who was considering throwing her hat in the ring. Dorothy Hoffman had overheard something about it at the switchboard.
“Didjya catch her name?”
Vivian frowned her disapproval at Pearl for asking the gossipy question, then scowled when one of her lights lit up and she had to answer the call instead of hearing the name of the lady running for mayor. A lady mayor?
Vivian quickly connected the call, then flipped the mute switch.
“When her kids were in high school she studied right along with them . . .” Ruth offered, from what she’d heard.
“She got her diploma . . .” Laura’s baby voice chimed in. “And then went to Cornell! That’s Ivy League!”
Cornell was a serious college. Even more serious than the College of Wooster. Vivian began to wonder if she might vote for a lady mayor, if the lady’d gone to Cornell.
“And, now, what do you know,” Pearl marveled. “She’s thinking of running for mayor of Wooster.”
Vivian’s smug self-righteousness about no longer eavesdropping lasted for a whole week. Then she rationalized that she could be more compassionate to her fellow Woosterites if she knew what was going on in their lives.
Chapter 46
Edward Dalton had never been a man of too many words, but his son’s surprise visit over Valentine’s Day weekend had sent him into a long spell of troubled silence. It’d been four weeks since the near-attack on Charlotte and the attempted break-in, and Edward had spent every waking moment in the shed out back, in the basement, at work, or at the lodge. Vivian wondered if he was speaking to anyone outside the house, or if his vocal cords had just shriveled right up from lack of use. When Charlotte asked him questions, he’d answer with a shake of his head, or by placing a hand on her shoulder or a kiss on the top of her head.
Vivian had enjoyed having the upper hand for that brief time she’d had it, what with Edward being a lying bigamist and her being the unsuspecting wife (mistress!). But the little drop-in from Eddie Junior had messed things up. Now Vivian wasn’t sure where to direct her lingering anger, which had lost a lot of steam with Edward’s sudden silence.
Vivian had asked if he wanted to come with them to Grandma Kurtz’s ninetieth birthday party, and he hadn’t responded. She kept talking to him, in spite of his muteness, because she knew the silence had to break sometime and he’d say something eventually. Wouldn’t he? Of course he would. Wouldn’t he? She didn’t know. It dawned on her that she didn’t know Edward like she’d thought she did. She felt like she’d been smacked diagonally by life, like in Looney Tunes where the smack froze the cartoon character into a sideways, flattened-out position. Vivian felt like she was now limping around all off-kilter, and maybe veering a little bit off the Road to Good.
Grandma Kurtz’s house was packed with relatives, from the crotchety ninety-year-old matriarch herself all the way down to the youngest, messiest great-grandchild, one of Cousin George’s kids. Vivian brought Charlotte, who wanted to see her great-grandmother and spend some time with her own cousins. Vivian didn’t really want to spend time with anyone, after being the humiliated center of attention of the family last month. But she wouldn’t let her bruised ego keep her from making an appearance. Fine, thank you! It was a momentous occasion, after all. Ninety years, sakes alive. And you just never knew; maybe the old bag had some money she’d leave them in her will. Grandma McGinty had been her favorite grandma. Grandma Kurtz had just been a pain in the neck. But, happy birthday, old lady!
The living room and adjacent parlor were packed to the gills with Kurtzes and the people they’d married, and Vivian had somehow ended up standing next to Vera while their Uncle David was making a speech. She hadn’t spoken to Vera since she’d called her a spoiled brat and an ungrateful bitch, and Vivian didn’t suppose she should expect an apology anytime soon. No, instead, right while Uncle David was talking about Grandma Kurtz’s long, incredible life (Vivian wanted to know what was so “incredible” about living on a farm and having too many kids), Vera had the nerve to grab Vivian’s right hand. Vivian felt Vera’s fingers fumbling around the claddagh ring, before she grasped it and yanked down, making a clumsy attempt at being playful, but really trying to pull it right off Vivian’s finger.
“Come on, Vivy,” she said in a low voice. “You weren’t really the first one to get married, now, were you?”
The few relatives who were standing nearby let out a collective gasp. It was a low blow, even for Vera.
“Vera!” Cousin Ruby hissed at her, while Uncle David, who could only hear the sound of his own voice, continued to talk. Vivian moved behind Ruby, away from Vera, her face reddened to the color of boiled beets.
After he finished his speech, David led everyone in a rousing chorus of “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” and while they all applauded the birthday girl, David received a wrinkled, smiling “Thank you, dear” from Grandma Kurtz. She must have been mellowing in her very old age, Vivian thought as she turned and took to the stairs.
Who the hell did Vera think she was, anyway? Calls me a bitch when I’ve just been through the worst time of my life? Vivian stomped past the second floor and continued up the staircase. Her skin felt prickly and the sting of tears threatened. Her self-esteem was hanging on by maybe just a ring and a ring finger. She could not believe what her sister had just done.
While friends and relatives milled around on the first floor, gabbing and eating cake, Vivian found herself alone and holding back tears while waiting to use the special bathroom Grandma Kurtz had had installed on the third floor of the house. “Because when I’m rememberin’ in mah picture books . . .”—“picture books” was what Grandma Kurtz called the photo albums her children and grandchildren gave her—“when I’m rememberin’ in mah picture books I don’t want to have to hightail it all the way down the stairs if I hear nature callin’.”
Almost no one else bothered with the third-floor bathroom because they had no interest in Grandma Kurtz’s picture books, and also because of all the stairs, but Vivian had made the extra effort to get away from everyone else at the party so she could be alone. But, wouldn’t it j
ust figure, there was someone else in the special bathroom, and she had to wait.
Finally, the door to the bathroom swung open and Vera’s husband, Wally, and a fresh spritz of a woodsy cologne, greeted her. Vivian forced a smile (Fine, thank you!). She was never without her manners at events and gatherings, regardless of who was there. Wally stood in the doorway, all protruding stomach, armpit stains, and wide eyes, surprised at seeing someone else on the third floor. He then slapped a hand to his cheek and tilted his head.
“Well, if it isn’t the second wife of Edward Dalton!”
And that was all she’d needed.
She shoved her way past Wally into the bathroom, slammed and locked the door, and reached for the beige bath towel that hung folded on the rod. She didn’t even wait to hear if Wally had started down the stairs before she held the folded towel to her face and let out a muffled scream. She then sat down hard on the wooden toilet seat cover (which she’d had to put down, of course, since Wally was a typical animal who left the seat up) and screamed into the towel again.
When she opened her eyes the edges of her vision blurred and she grabbed the seat under her to steady herself. The small room looked to be tilting from one side to the other. She squeezed her eyes shut again and tried to slow her breathing. There was a faint ringing in her ears and she could hear the faraway voices of the party two floors below. When she opened her eyes a second time the blurriness had cleared. She looked over at the towel and smiled at the lipstick mark Grandma Kurtz would yell about later, long after all her guests had gone. She felt a hiccup of giggle in her throat. Then Charlotte was calling up the stairs after her, and she stood quickly, smoothing her dress and the stray hairs around her face. In the mirror she rubbed Fire & Ice from her dentures and from the edges of her lips.
When she reappeared downstairs in the parlor with Charlotte, Ruby came at her with a small plate of cake and a fork. “Vivy, did you hear about the lady who might be running for mayor of Wooster? Are you feeling okay? You look pale. Charlotte, honey, there’s more cake in the kitchen.”
This was how Ruby offered comfort, and Vivian appreciated it. She accepted the cake and fork and shot a quick look around the rooms. She could see her mother near the kitchen and her father next to the picture window, talking to Henry and his awful wife, Norma. Awful in the way that she was just so prim-and-pretty perfect, and had been lucky enough to snag Henry for a husband.
“Vivy?”
“Hmm?” She looked at Ruby. “Lady running for Wooster mayor?”
“Yes!” Ruby clapped her hands together. “She went to Apple Creek High School, so you wouldn’t have known her. She had to drop out, but sakes alive if she didn’t get right back into it after her kids went there.”
Vivian had poked the fork gently into the cake and pried off a corner of the piece.
“Can you imagine it? Mayor Sylvia!”
“Sylvia?” Vivian repeated, letting the name settle properly on her tongue. “Sylvia Emerich?”
“Why, yes!” Ruby was thrilled that Vivian knew who she was talking about. “It’s not Emerich anymore, though, it’s Yoder. You know, she married that sweet farmer.” Her voice lowered to a whisper. “He, uh, got her into trouble, you know. That’s why she had to leave school.”
The farmer takes a wife. The farmer takes a wife. Eeeeeeeee!
When Vivian got home after the party she removed her pumps at the front door, hung her coat and hat in the closet, and stomped straight up to the little attic room, leaving Charlotte to bring in the plate they’d brought the banana bread on, and to lock the car and close the garage. Vivian closed the door to the room, and then sat and cried over the typewriter for a half hour, before she eventually dried her eyes and then began to hammer away at the keys.
Outside My Window
Spring is only a glimpse away
With holiday seasons in the past
In simple thanks to God we pray
Our labors in usefulness to cast
Give us strength to lift the soil
Plant seeds with loving care
Achieve happiness through our toil
And feel your guidance always there
This quiet, between-the-seasons stage
Is like a hand upon my shoulder
Releasing power to turn the page
And face our new spring bolder.
First thing Monday morning Vivian dropped off the envelope with “Outside My Window” in person to the Spindrift committee office out on RD 4, just past the chocolate factory where Don McAfee had his office. Rather than sending her a mailed response, the committee telephoned her on Wednesday to tell her it had been accepted, and as it had such a timely, springtime theme, they would be printing it in the following Saturday Spindrift column.
Vivian spent all day Thursday and all day Friday smiling and sailing about everywhere she went. Work, Buehler’s, out to the shed to tell her mute husband his dinner was getting cold. You could not wipe the smile from her face. This was more than her usual happiness at having her poetry published in The Daily Record. She’d seen the acceptance from the newspaper as a sign.
The freedom she felt, and the new knowledge that Apple Creek’s Sylvia Emerich had turned her life around, gave her a little hope that maybe she wasn’t as stuck in her life as she’d thought.
Chapter 47
“What on earth would I do with this?” Vivian exclaimed, holding her Mother’s Day gift (what she would later be able to describe as) aloft.
Charlotte had given her mother a brand-new copy of Webster’s New World Dictionary.
“Oh, Mother.” Charlotte rolled her eyes with a little smile, then went up to her room, leaving her parents sitting together on the sofa in the living room.
Vivian placed the dictionary on the coffee table and scooted back against the lipstick-free sofa cushions.
“Edward,” she said. “I know you don’t want to talk about it.”
He frowned and looked at his fingernails, which were still stained and beaten up from the flower window boxes he’d made her.
“Will you just tell me one thing?”
When he didn’t get up from the sofa she continued.
“Did you take that prison guard job so you could keep an eye on him?”
Edward pursed his lips and looked at the floor.
Vivian watched him stare at the carpet for about a minute before giving a slow nod of his head.
“You remember . . .” he began, and Vivian stayed as still as she could so he wouldn’t stop. It was time he said something.
“You remember how you used to talk about those girls who got themselves into trouble before they got married?” He raked his palm back and forth over his forehead a few times, then rubbed the rough, weathered skin on his cheeks and chin. Vivian sat and waited.
“I still remember that one, Sylvia Emerich. You never stopped talking about her.”
Sylvia Emerich. Vivian nodded and wondered why it was that everyone was suddenly talking about Sylvia Emerich all the time. But she knew what he meant. She remembered. She’d carped and harped about Sylvia for the first couple years of her marriage. “That tramp,” and “ruined her life,” and “what kind of idiot does something so irresponsible?” and so on and so on. She was a little surprised that Edward had been listening to her. Most of her grumbling back then’d been because she was stuck all by herself in that crummy little bungalow, lonely and bored and grumpy.
She stared at the W on the Webster’s cover for a few minutes while Edward just sat there next to her, elbows on knees, holding his forehead in his hands. Nothing more was said, except the talking inside of Vivian’s head. Finally, the talking started to make sense to her. Wasn’t that just a hoot? She’d never thought that her own husband might’ve done something “so irresponsible” himself.
Vivian hadn’t really thought about it up until now, but if Edward had stayed with Mildred this whole time, instead of leaving her and coming to Wooster, they’d be going on their thirtieth anniversary thi
s year. Oh, poor Mildred, Vivian thought as she continued to stare at the dictionary cover. Thirtieth is pearls. Vivian’s head shook slowly from side to side. Tsk-tsk. That was a shame.
She finally reached out her manicured hand for Edward’s paint-stained one. He’d never been a big talker, and what he’d just said to her was plenty. She knew him enough to know that. Edward closed his fingers around hers and they sat that way, quietly beside each other on the sofa in the living room.
“Eddie broke his parole leaving Syracuse to come here.”
“Mm-hmm,” Vivian murmured.
“They sent him back to prison.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“I’d like to visit him there in the summer.”
Vivian said nothing, but nodded and squeezed his hand. Then they sat staring ahead through the living room picture window for what seemed like hours.
“Did you hear?” Vivian finally broke the silence and turned to face her husband. “Sylvia Emerich might be running for mayor of Wooster next year?”
Chapter 48
Charlotte would have said she had had quite enough shocks and surprises to last her through the rest of the year, thanks a bunch. However, one Sunday afternoon, a couple of weeks after Mother’s Day, she had come home from Barb’s house to find her mother tucked in a corner of the couch, with her new dictionary open on the coffee table and her nose buried in Charlotte’s repaired copy of The Myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus, the Greek king who stole the secrets of the gods and was punished for it; condemned to roll an enormous stone up a hill for all eternity.
At this point Charlotte would have chosen that stone-rolling rather than the impossible task of trying to understand her family. Her mother, who normally would have been wearing her apron and banging cabinets in the kitchen (which she had not done in months), was in a housedress and a pair of Charlotte’s dad’s socks, curled into the far corner of the couch, reading. A book.
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